The little window to inside
by planet p
Summary: About Bobby, sort of.


**The little window to insid****e **by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

* * *

_For my father, who said he liked this one_

_And for Bobby, of course_

* * *

His grandmother told him that the books had been his mother's as a little girl, kept all neat in a row, like little sticks of soldiers – thin, flattened things – standing to attention, holding their scrawls that ran from head to toe, with words upon them, and hidden so.

He thought of the little people Gulliver had met on his travels. They did not move, so still they were, no breath at all, breath itself turned to stone; the words unspoken, trapped in time and seized up like the workings of a miniscule clockwork, and that was all the little people could ponder or know, for they had been told, so, so long ago – how long ago now? – to hold their tongue. Not even a whisper.

He stood still, as still as stone, as still as the little soldier people, and listened, listened for a whisper or a breath that was not his own; and he would know, he would be sure, that it was not his own, because it hurt to hold his breath when he felt so shaky inside but nothing at all showed on the outside.

The little soldier people did not speak – they had been told not to – though they remembered no such thing, and over and over their thoughts ran, over on nothing, because there was nothing and they were stone and they held no breath nor life.

He let his breath out, thinking without caution, and it sounded to him suspiciously of a sigh. His chest hurt.

He reached out a hand across the small space of the empty room – he was that close to the bookshelf – fingers all bitten, and three with sticky plasters there on them. The little soldier man stepped sharply forward, but no longer was he a little soldier man, but a book, a book of words inside, and all sitting neatly there saying nothing, but speaking volumes had you the key to unlock their mouths and hearts and minds and souls.

He sat down, there on the floor, with his legs crossed the way you did, all in a circle for Show-and-Tell, and peered down at the pictures through the air that was not still and all things so very old; that turned – by what wicked magical enchantment? – to a witch's brew and made you tired at the sight of Moon's face that did not smile.

The Sun was out, to be true, in the little window to outside, and so merry and gay, as across the sky he rode, and Bobby smiled.

* * *

One, two, three, he counted, like marching ants; fingers side stepping over the words standing up off the flat face of the page in such confusion; stumbling here, and skidding, sliding there.

The pictures made him smile, and with no worry at all for those sad and lost and lonely missing words, because he made up new words, and happy words they were, oh and how they fit, just as if he had never made them up at all, just as if they were real.

* * *

He stood, at present, and ran, right out of that room, and halfway there already, when he thought to slow his pace, and walked into the kitchen and up to the table and onto the seat.

His grandmother sat at the kitchen table, alone but for that kitchen and its things, and the stroke of day on her face that she did not feel.

He wanted to read this one, to read this story for her. Oh and could he? Yes, he would, he would anyway, even if she said no, and then she would smile.

His grandmother smiled, and all without a story. "In English, Bobby," she told him.

He was already turning to the first page, and she wasn't so sure that he had heard her, but for that he spoke as she had said, in English, and told her, the story all wrong, and she frowned – yes she frowned – but that was not right, she told him, with a smile inside, and yes it was, he told her, with a smile outside, the little marching ants chanted as they marched, and he could hear them chanting and it was as he told her, exactly as they said, not a word out of place or a stitch dropped, marching left to right and back again, all down the page. He was young, and she so old, and his ears better than hers. And tick, tock, away went the clock.

* * *

"Bobby?" his mother said from the door – there in the door, right there in the door, and her black high heels – her voice stiff and splintered underneath, the way wood got, but all soft and sanded out on top and no one could see underneath, and busy little termites, busy, busy, busy. She strode across the floor, the way she always walked. "You can't play with that," she said. "It's not a toy," and took the book up into her hands, her own book, that held more than words, and memories, memories that should not be disturbed.

She turned and walked, to the door, but he should not have been smiling.

"Come out of there," she said from the door. "Go out to your father and tell him that we're going home."

* * *

He walked up to the door; one, two, three, and counted his steps as he went, speaking without words. The neat order of the corridor so quiet that he thought that his words might crack the walls from the bottom up or shatter the glass there in those picture frames tacked to the wall. One, two, three; he walked, careful to count his steps, and all of everything else so distant. Step one, pause, and step two, pause, and step three, pause, and step...

* * *

They had come to return grandfather home, and now grandfather and his father stood outside, and talking, and Bobby counted, and smiled, because he could see them talking, but he didn't hear them, not the words, just sounds, because in his head he was counting.

* * *

It was so hot, his mother said, sitting in the car as they drove, and leant to turn the air conditioning on because surely the wind would ruin her hair were she to wind the window down and she had put so much effort into it and she wanted to keep it if only until dinner was done and they had eaten.

Bobby's father said nothing, and on went the car, over that dusty road, and – oh – it was just terrible, this road, his mother exclaimed.

His father looked across at her, briefly. What did she think, he said, the municipal council was a joke.

His mother did not look around and pressed her mouth shut and her expression agreed. A joke indeed, it said.

* * *

**Author's Note** This is my Bobby, so he's going be different to your Bobby, so AU, I guess. R&R


End file.
